A Way With Words
by howtodisappearcompletely
Summary: It's near the end of high school, and Stan has planned something special for Kyle. What should be a perfect day could be ruined by an unforeseen accident though, and on top of that, Stan is acting weird... Style. One-shot.


"I have a surprise for you!" They'd just finished school for the day, and Stan was yelling out of his car window, gesturing at Kyle to come over. "You got any important plans for tonight?"

"Yeah, sorry." Kyle replied, and he saw the excitement vanish from Stan's face. "Sixteen and Pregnant is on, plus my mom promised to overcook some horrible Jewish food. Seriously, I think we're literally having gefilte fish."

Stan laughed, and somewhere behind him he was pretty sure Cartman did as well. "Get in and buckle up, ass-hat."

The car door shut with a dull clunk. Kyle pulled the seatbelt across his chest, moving slowly to stop it snagging along the way. Stan's VW Polo was old – it had to be treated with respect.

"Ready to go?" Stan asked, having to strain a little to ease the stiff handbrake free.

"Yeah…" Kyle was trying to make a decent guess as to what this 'surprise' was. Normally he could read Stan like a book, which always really annoyed him. If he did figure it out he'd keep it to himself and act surprised anyway.

"So…Stanford Med School. Congratulations man." Stan reached across and opened the glove compartment, revealing the familiar but small selection of CDs to choose from. Kyle made a mental note to get Stan a new car radio with an iPod plug-in for his next birthday.

"I can't really believe it yet." Kyle said, and it was true. The morning he opened the letter seemed like a bit of a blur, and the idea of actually becoming a doctor was still terrifying. "You'll get some good news soon, then we can go celebrate together." Stan had only heard back from one college – a rejection from UCLA.

"Yeah."

Kyle opted in the end for _Lonerism _by Tame Impala – an album he and San had been listening to a lot this year – and slotted it into the drive. It felt kind of nice handling the music like that, and holding a physical copy in his hands; Stan had to be the only person he knew still buying CDs.

"So where are we going?"

"Wow, does Stanford know they're getting a student who doesn't know the definition of 'surprise'?" Stan joked, and Kyle socked him on the shoulder in response.

There wasn't much talking after that, but Kyle didn't mind. He actually liked being in the car and just staring out of the window, letting the music and the scenery blend together. That way, in ten or twenty years' time if he heard this album again it would conjure all of this straight back up in his mind. It was that special sort of friendship as well, where conversation wasn't like a fire that needed to be constantly stoked or else it would burn out.

In reality though, he spent as much time staring at Stan as he did looking out of the window. It seemed impossible not to; he'd been in way too deep with this obsession for ages, but now it was really out of hand. He decided to see if he could find something about the way Stan looked that he didn't like; something that was at least not _perfect_. His hair was fairly uninteresting, wasn't it? Straight, jet black and kept fairly short, there was nothing remarkable about that. The color went well with the bright hue of his blue eyes though, and it fell so nicely across his forehead…plus he never put _any _effort into it; he chose whatever place was cheapest to get his haircut, didn't use any product and pretty much wore it the way it emerged from bed. It summed up Stan's attitude as well, and that made it kind of perfect; he wasn't self-obsessed or overly self-conscious, everything about Kyle that made his own hair situation such an unmitigated disaster.

He skipped the eyes (that would be a waste of time) and looked at the nose and ears – faultless. Stan's jawline was strong and his cheekbones were defined, but not too much, so he looked masculine but still boyish. Stan's body had kept him awake more nights than he dared to count. Kyle slumped back in his seat, defeated, and let out an angry sigh.

"You okay?" Stan asked, looking at him quizzically and raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, yeah I'm fine." Kyle replied. That was it, his eyebrows! They were maybe a little on the thick side…

"Good, this is going to be amazing." Stan smiled, and his eyebrows moved again. Damn, Kyle liked them exactly the way they were.

They pulled over at a truck stop for some dinner, wolfing down a greasy burger and fries combo with a suspiciously lumpy milkshake to go with it. Stan paid, despite Kyle's incessant protests, insisting it was a treat as part of the celebrations for his college offer. Considering Kyle was the one with a big scholarship it didn't make sense that Stan was paying for anything at the moment, but there was nothing he could say to change his mind. Once they'd finished they left the main road and headed more directly up towards the mountains, the roads getting narrower and quieter until Kyle found himself getting excited every time they saw another car, peering in to judge what sort of person was driving around this area in the evening and wondering where the hell they might be going.

The car (or 'Maxine', as Stan _insisted _on referring to it as) started producing a strange rumbling noise once the roads got a little less smooth, which was something new to add to its collection of quirks. At first Kyle had thought it was just the speakers struggling to cope with a particularly adventurous bass line, but he was pretty sure now that it was coming from under the hood.

Stan seemed on edge, too. His left hand was on his thigh – not resting, but visibly gripping his leg tight enough to make his knuckles a little pale. There was something weird about the way he was staring so fixatedly at the road ahead as well, since on the rare occasions in the past when they'd gone driving in the mountains Kyle had to constantly chastise him for trying to spot deer, instead of focusing on not sending them careering off a cliff.

Maybe it was just dawning on him that the year was almost over and soon they'd be off to college. That had been on Kyle's mind for ages now, hanging over him like a dark thundercloud, only worse, since thunderclouds don't announce the exact time they're going to begin the shit-storm months in advance so your life is ruined by constant worry. The entire year had been spent being told by Kenny, Wendy, Ike and Kenny (again) that he might as well tell Stan how he feels before it's too late and he regrets it. There was always that one phrase: _you have nothing to lose_. What a load of bullshit. They all seemed adamant that Stan felt the same (Wendy even claimed to Kyle that it was why she ended their lengthy relationship), but even if he was ninety percent sure that was true, it would still be a huge risk to take. This friendship was everything to him.

Ike had said something in his typically crass yet intellectual way that kept tumbling around in his head though, refusing to leave him in peace. He'd said that Kyle didn't want to end up a 'regret filled husk of a man', and that image was hard to shake off. College would be fine though, and he and Stan would keep in touch – it wasn't like these next couple of months were his last chance ever.

The unsettling rumble Maxine was making suddenly evolved into a crunching sound, and the car lurched a couple of times before Stan hit the brake.

"What the fuck was that?" Kyle asked once they came to a halt.

"Shit. I don't know." Stan opened the door and stepped out, so Kyle followed suit. They were on a remote looking track, walled on either side by dense pine trees that carried on as far as the eye could see. As places to break down went, he could think of a few better.

"Oh Jesus." Stan opened the hood and smoke billowed out from around the sides, pouring up over the trees and dissipating into the clear sky. The sun was about to set, becoming blocked by the forest and sliding slowly out of view. "I have no phone signal. Shit, do you have anything?"

Kyle dug into his front pocket and pulled out his crappy old Nokia. "Nope, I've got nada."

"Fuck." Stan cursed, pinching the bridge of his nose. This was a bad time for Kyle to be finding that an insanely attractive quirk of his. "I have no idea what's wrong, none of the warning lights were flashing…"

"Don't look at me for help." Kyle said instinctively. "I know _nothing _about cars."

"Ok, would you turn on the engine? I'm going to see if I can tell which part is broken at least."

Kyle walked around to the driver's side and turned the key in the ignition. The car actually started, but was instantly making the ear-splitting, crunching noise from earlier. About five seconds later it cut out, and the Kyle could see smoke leaking from the front again. Stan was peering down at it with an exasperated look on his face.

"I can't emphasise enough how little that helped." Stan said when Kyle re-emerged from the car. "The smoke is coming from here-" He pointed at a small chamber just behind the engine, "but that looks normal to me, and I don't even know what the fuck it is!"

"Maybe someone will drive along here soon, we'll just sit tight for a while – it's fine." Kyle tried to relax the mood a little.

"No, that's the whole fucking point! Look around, no one drives up here!" Stan held his phone up into the air and waved it about, making hunting for signal look a lot like a kid trying to catch a butterfly. "Motherfucker!" He yelled, giving one of the front tyres a kick.

"Hey," Kyle walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder. "It's ok. Someone will come by eventually. Whatever you had planned we can do another time I'm sure. It's not the end of the world."

Stan pulled him into a hug then, his sturdy, football-throwing arms wrapping around Kyle's back and squeezing their bodies close. "It feels like the end of the world."

With that Stan pulled away and put the hood back down, before walking around and opening the trunk. He came back with a rucksack and an armful of blankets, one of which he laid across the hood.

"Come here." Stan's voice sounded light and fragile, like it was on the verge of cracking. Kyle obliged, pulling himself up so they were both lying with their backs up against the windscreen of the car. "Of all nights to let me down Maxine, you chose tonight." He said wistfully, the joke falling flat because of the depressing delivery.

"What's really the matter Stan?" Kyle asked, blindsided by how passionately he was acting, even by his own emotional standards.

"Nothing. Everything is fucking fantastic."

It was almost pitch dark now, barring the faintest glow from a half moon in the sky somewhere, obscured by the trees. They lay quietly for a while, and Kyle didn't press any further. Time and silence were two key stages in Stan's recovery process, something that Kyle was a tiny bit proud to be an expert in.

Then, from behind the treeline a bright white dot suddenly emerged, carving its way across the skyline with a blue-ish trail behind it.

"Oh my God." Kyle whispered. "This is it, isn't it? This is the surprise, we were going to see the meteor shower…" Almost every year he talked idly about going up to some place quiet and away from the lights of the town to watch the Lyrid meteors in April, but he never actually got round to it. Stan had his love of nature, but for Kyle it had always been astronomy, and Space.

More and more of these brightly colored lines kept emerging, swirling around the bright star at their center. Kyle knew it was called Vega, and it seemed to wink and shimmer in the sky like a good-looking woman surrounded by swooning admirers. The whole thing was stupefying in its beauty, and it made him feel so physically small and insignificant but yet more at ease as well, knowing that they were some small part of a universe this stunning.

"It's perfect. Thank you so much." He managed to choke out eventually.

"Just a few miles down the road there's a clearing, that's where we were going. It's meant to be the perfect place around here to see this." Stan still seemed upset, but Kyle wanted to let him know this was plenty good enough.

"I can't believe you thought of this." He muttered. "You know, most people would just buy their friends a drink or something. You're something else, Marsh." He meant it to sound sentimental but as soon as he said it he was worried it would come across as flippant instead. It was such a handicap being clumsy with words at a time like this.

"Sheila told me that when you were very young you went on holiday to Canada," Stan began. "There was a shower happening, and apparently you looked up and saw all the meteors falling and asked if God was crying." He always knew what to say. Nine times out of ten if they had an essay to write, Kyle could piece it together and score a higher mark, but out here, on the spot, Stan could be profound and Kyle could barely string a sentence together.

"I didn't know that." He replied, wondering how long this plan had been in the works for and who else Stan had spoken to about it.

They could only see a fairly narrow strip of the sky, with the treeline cutting off the sides, but the comets kept coming. Some almost seemed close, fireballs falling towards earth, while others were distant shooting stars.

"It feels like the end of an era." Stan said, his voice so heavy it was making Kyle emotional as well.

"It's not. We're gonna keep in contact, and when we're both out of college we can get jobs near each other, and it'll be back to normal. I promise."

"Things going 'back to normal' was never what I wanted." Stan sat upright on the hood, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of the grey hoodie he was wearing.

"What are you saying?" Kyle suddenly felt miles behind the conversation and his mind was scrambling to catch up.

"I'm saying I'm in love with you. But I'm saying I'm not actually waiting to hear back from my colleges, because they all already rejected me. I'm not going to school, Kyle. I'm not going anywhere."

"I don't…" Kyle trailed off. He couldn't really believe this conversation was happening, let alone here, on some forgotten road through a forest while a meteor shower unfolded above their heads. "Stan, I love you too. Why didn't you tell me? I mean about college-"

Kyle was shaking but he reached towards Stan anyway, deciding he could try to respond better with actions than he had with words. He leaned over and pressed their lips together, lifting his hand to cup Stan's damp cheek.

"No." Stan broke away, placing a firm hand on Kyle's chest to keep him at arm's length. "That's not what this is, didn't you hear me? I got rejected from everywhere, Kyle."

"I heard when you said you loved me, that's what matters. You can try again, or find a job somewhere and work your up, it isn't important, not really…"

"The only relationships that last are ones when both people are intellectually similar. That's a fact. I had to get into one of those colleges Kyle, and have a career for myself, that was the plan." Kyle tried to move closer but Stan kept his hand pressing against Kyle's ribs. "Or else what am I going to be? Your deadbeat, redneck partner who sponges off you for the rest of your life? No, that can't happen. You need to go to Stanford, and find someone who can be good for you."

Kyle was stunned into silence. Stan had known how he felt, but had kept quiet because of this, and Kyle had been oblivious the whole time.

"That had been the _plan_?" He asked incredulously.

"Yes. Look, I'm sorry, I know you feel this way now but you'll get over this." Stan was borderline sobbing now, looking away from Kyle to try and hide as much as possible. "I wanted to take you here to say I'm so fucking proud of you, so go conquer the world. I can figure my own shit out."

"Fuck you. Fuck you for telling me what I can 'get over' and fuck you for thinking you know what I want." Kyle was rallying now, and the words were coming easier to him now that he was angry. "That was never 'the plan', anyway."

Stan turned to look at him, finally lifting his hand from Kyle's chest to run it through his jet hair. "What do you mean?"

"I was supposed to go to Stanford. You were supposed to go wherever you wanted. I'm supposed to become a surgeon, but Stan, you're not supposed to just jump on the corporate ladder. You've always been the free-spirit, you were always supposed to follow your dream; music, or nature, or art-" Kyle scooted closer and Stan allowed him to place an arm over his shoulder. "You were never meant to be studying _business_, Stan. That's not you."

The wind was beating the tops of the trees restlessly and whistling through the branches, and Kyle was sure that the temperature was probably dropping but he felt boiling hot. They were on another planet now, some place that only they inhabited and where no one else mattered.

"I can't live off you like some parasite, and sit at home while you go study with all the other people who can actually hold a conversation with you about science. I'll never be able to do that."

"You won't sit at home. You'll write music, you'll play, and people will listen because it's you, and you have this passion that I don't. You know, I was so excited when I got accepted because I couldn't stop thinking about how impressed you'd be. You have so much that I don't – so what if this turns out to be my thing?" Kyle knew exactly what to say, because he'd thought about this too, all the time. "When I come home from work, you'll be the one that makes me want to get up and do it again. _That _is the plan."

Kyle rested his hand on Stan's tentatively, and suddenly he burst into life, pinning Kyle to the car and kissing his neck, sucking on the skin and then working his way up to the lips. It was all his relief in one action, and Kyle was almost too stunned to respond. His body took the reins from his mind eventually though, moving his lips with the same hunger as Stan's. Completely on top of him now, Stan started to rut against him. It was primal, trying to bring their bodies even closer together, their hardness obvious through the material of sweatpants and jeans, putting any doubts about how the other felt to rest. Kyle pushed his tongue into Stan's mouth, tasting him properly for the first time. At some point he realized that he was finally free to touch wherever he wanted to, and let his hands roam up and down Stan's firm stomach and chest, lingering over the nipples, feeling a rush of excitement when they were erect. Stan's hands meanwhile kept switching between Kyle's hair – which was cropped short, but was just long enough to run fingers through – and his ass, which Stan was lifting from the blanket and squeezing, even slipping his hands under Kyle's clothes to grope at the bare skin. Kyle couldn't help but smirk into the kiss – he'd always suspected Stan liked those two things about him best.

Stan pulled away for air – something Kyle seemed to have forgotten about completely – and leaned upright, he legs still straddling Kyle's waist. It was hard to believe he was looking at the moonlit, grinning face of his best friend, and that he was the one who had tousled his hair like that, and made his lips fat from kissing. His best friend that he could finally say out loud he was in love with. Maybe he wasn't so useless with words after all.

X

_A/N so there's a little one-shot for you _

_I hope you didn't die from an overdose of corniness haha, but the meteor shower last week was amazing, so I wanted to write something stupid and fun about it._

_Let me know what you thought, I'll appreciate it!_


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